


The First Night

by fid_gin



Series: The Loved 'verse [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1352353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose's first night back on the TARDIS, in the <i>Loved</i> 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Night

**Author's Note:**

> Original posting date: September 26, 2009

Her first night back on the TARDIS is far from how she imagined it.

Those final moments back in that other universe, the dimension cannon powering up and her mum and Mickey looking fretfully on, Rose had closed her eyes, the thundering of her heart in her ears nearly drowning out the rising shriek of the machine, and had soothed her nerves by imagining how wonderful it would be. She was going to see him. _Him._ The _Doctor._ She would touch and hold and make love to him, and he would kiss her and stroke her face and finish that damned sentence he'd started years ago, and nothing would ever separate them again.

Now...now she's watching him sleep on a sofa, his head cradled in her lap, his legs curled awkwardly beneath him. His blue suit jacket is badly wrinkled and his mouth is slightly open, lips shining faintly with sleep-drool. And at the same time, the Doctor is several rooms over, not speaking to her and banging furiously at the console of his ship. Tears prick Rose's eyes as she smoothes her hands over the part-human Doctor's hair. No, nothing is the way she thought it would be.

They talked for hours, this newer Doctor and herself, after he found her in the kitchen. Maybe it was being back in familiar surroundings, seeing the Doctor back in his TARDIS, but she found herself more comfortable around him now than she had been in Norway. He told her about how he'd come to be – an angry, far-off look in his eyes as he spoke of what he remembered about the regeneration – and she filled him in on her life since Canary Wharf, her voice sad but resolved as she spoke of her mum. At some point they moved to the library, and he began yawning as his speech grew slower and somewhat slurred. When she patted her lap and invited him to lay down he looked terrified and refused, but once he settled his head and she started to comb her fingers through his hair, his eyelids drooped immediately and he was snoring seconds later.

Rose stares down at this new, sleeping Doctor. _I love you and I've only just met you,_ she thinks. Remembering that this Doctor is also the Doctor in the other room, she mentally adds: _And I hate you a little bit, too._ Deciding now is as good of time as any to confront him, she gently slips out from underneath the Doctor, leaving him sleeping soundly.

The Time Lord Doctor is at the console, his back to her, his shoulders hunched, looking like a man with the weight of the universe on his back. She knows he knows she's there, and makes no pretence of trying to sneak up on him. "Are you glad to see me at all?" she asks, her voice flat and cold. 

The tiniest flinch, but other than that he doesn't move. "How's the duplicate?" he asks, not turning around.

"The _Doctor_ is sleeping, if that's who you mean." Rose smiles dryly. "Funny, you were awfully keen on insisting he was you when you were abandoning us on that beach."

"And you obviously didn't believe it or you wouldn't still be here." 

Rose walks slowly up behind him. "It's not like that. I wanted to stay with you...both of you, because I love you." Her voice is calm, somehow not betraying the rage behind it. "It'd be nice if you just accepted that for once instead of leaving me behind or sending me away because you think I can't possibly understand what I'm saying. M'not nineteen any more, Doctor."

Still not looking at her: "You love him, too." It's not a question.

Rose rolls her eyes; trust the Doctor to start getting jealous of himself. "You'd leave me to spend the rest of my life with him, tell me he needs me and I'm supposed to make him better, but I'm not allowed to feel anything for him? Isn't he you?"

The Doctor whirls on her, all lightning eyes and hurricane hair and oncoming storm. "You know what happened to Donna? What I did to her?"

She backs away from him despite herself. "He told me you'd have to..."

"She's gone. She might as well be dead. _And it's his fault._ " 

"Bollocks! You're the one who syphoned the regeneration energy into your hand just so you could stay the same, don't you try and blame it on him! He _told_ me how you did it on purpose, to keep from changing." He continues advancing on her, and she backs into a railing. Nowhere to hide.

"He did, did he?" His voice is deadly-quiet, that voice she's only ever heard him use on their enemies, usually just before it kicks off. Rose thinks she can cope with his anger, because she knows he would never hurt her. But if he truly _resents_ her for what she's done, for forcing her way back into his life...if he really doesn't _want_ her here, she can't face that. She imagines for a split second running to grab the other Doctor, telling him they made a mistake, that they should leave, but he continues. "What if it had been you? What if it _is_ you someday? I can't take away a metacrisis like I did the Time Vortex, Rose. There are things that can happen to you, travelling with me, that are much, much worse than dying. _That_ is why I keep sending you away, because I won't do it. I won't do that to you." His voice cracks. "I can't. And you have to ask me to _say_ that I..." The Doctor's mouth opens and closes, but his words have dried up. He stumbles forward and she catches him, wrapping her arms around him, this alien who she has held so many times and loved for so long, but she's never seen him like this. The arms which clutch at her squeeze her tight enough to take her breath away.

"It's okay," she squeaks with her constricted lungs. "You didn't hurt her, Doctor, you _saved_ her. You saved me. I'm _here_." A great sob racks his body and she is shocked – she's never seen him cry like this before.

His face is shining when he pulls back and kisses her, kisses her lips and her nose, her cheeks and her eyelids and her forehead, makes her damp with his tears. "You're here," he says between kisses. "You're here and I _am_ glad you're back, I _am_ , Rose. Rose, Rose, Rose."

Minutes go by and the tears begin to dry as his kisses become heated, his hands gripping her ass and pulling her against him. She gasps at the feel of his erection pressing against her belly and he moans into her mouth, whispers against the corner of her lips: "Is it too soon?" She thinks she should say yes – she's still angry with him and there's the other Doctor and it _is_ frankly too soon, but she feels herself shaking her head No and he takes her hand, pulling her along behind him, practically dragging her to his room where he falls upon her again, shoving her against the still-closed door.

"Door," she says. He is sucking on her neck, biting at her as though he won't believe she is real until he can taste her in his mouth, his hands cupping, fondling her breasts through her shirt and then slipping down to grasp the hem and pull it up out of the way so he can fumble at the buttons of her black trousers. "Door," she repeats, grabbing his head and pulling him away from her to look him in the eye, to get his attention before he shags her standing up right out here in the hallway. Crushing his lips against hers again, he reaches behind her to turn the handle and they tumble through.

How long since she has been in this room? Years for her, but she has no idea how long it's been on this side of the Void. Longer? Has he had anyone else in here, since she fell off that lever...Martha Jones? Jack? Or someone she hasn't met, yet? Rose's mind goes a thousand miles an hour, and just as before he seems to hear it. "No one," he mumbles against her throat after he has whipped her shirt off and done the same with his, undoing only the buttons at the wrists and enough at the neck to get it over his head. "No one else." 

They fall onto his bed, which is made up and has an artificial, unused look. All the time they were together, she never saw him sleep, and when she'd asked him once before what he had a bedroom for in the first place he'd shown her in exactly the way he's about to do right now. Not that his room is the only place they've shagged on the TARDIS, but Rose can say with authority that his bed is considerably more comfortable than the console. He sits back, slowly pulling her trousers and knickers down and off, his eyes taking in each inch of her skin as it is bared to him. Wriggling out of her bra, she becomes aware of him staring. "What?"

He's sitting back on his heels. Naked, he looks just like any other man, which is to say he looks vulnerable and slightly ridiculous and unspeakably sexy, but apart from that he also looks sad. And happy. "You," he says. Crawling forward, sliding his body along hers, slipping his hand between her legs and stroking until she is asking for him, begging. He rolls on top of her...he has always fit here, between her legs and inside of her so damn _well_. After the first time, all those years ago, he'd confessed to her that he had no idea what had taken them so long, because it had been perfect. Even more so after the regeneration, when he seemed to have been sculpted just for her. The Doctor moves inside of her in long, deep strokes that take her to the edge almost too fast, but she knew their first time after being reunited would be over quickly. He's crying out, his eyes closed and his face screwed up, and she knows he's barely holding on. Rolling them over, she straddles him; she finds her orgasm quickly from this angle, is unable to keep from shouting as she rides him through her climax, meeting him as he thrusts up into her one final time and comes with her name on his lips.

They collapse in a limp tangle but he holds her still against him, on top of him, his cock growing soft inside her, and she senses that he's not ready to be separated from her just yet. He's whispering to her in another language, his language which he's only ever spoken in her presence a handful of times before. When he's unwilling or unable to truly express himself in English. From the man with the gob that won't quit, it's a compliment.

Finally, seemingly reluctantly, he rolls them to the side and slips from her, and she curls against him. The silence between them seems to grow larger and give birth to little baby silences. Rose wonders if the other Doctor heard them. Wonders if he didn't, if she should tell him. How is this going to work? 

"You were wrong, you know." His voice startles her.

"About what?"

"He saved you. Not me." The Doctor swallows. "I don't know...I don't know if I can face...him. Having him around."

Rose cups his cheek. "You idiot," she says, with great affection. "Would it be so terrible, if you eventually learned to see in yourself what everyone else does? That you're an amazing man?"

He doesn't answer. "How could you just leave us?" she asks, and now there are tears in her voice. "How could you leave me?"

He rolls toward her and to her surprise he smiling softly. "As it turns out, I couldn't." There is bitterness behind that smile, but there is joy, too.

And in that moment, Rose somehow knows that everything is going to be okay.


End file.
